Jesuit Journeys
Spring/Summer 2005

BY Greg Meuler

Trends, changes, and challenges in Jesuit secondary education. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I first began observing them just five years after the Wisconsin Province was formed when I walked into Marquette University High School in 1960 for what remains a memorable freshman year.

OWhile most students today arrive primarily by car and many park in a large student lot, my classmates and I arrived each day either by hitchhiking or by city bus. Yes, hitchhiking. Different times indeed.

We filed into classrooms that all looked the same – 35 desks, 5 rows across, 7 deep, bolted to hardwood. Most teachers looked the same too – dressed in black robes tightened at the waist by a strip of cloth. We soon learned the robes were called “cassocks” and belt-like strips “cinctures.”

It took us a little longer to learn that some of these “Blackrobes” were “Father” Jesuits, some “Brother,” and some “Mister,” the latter being those in training to become either a Father or a Brother. All but one of my classes were taught by one or the other forms of Jesuit. For algebra I had a non-Jesuit “Mister” who wore normal clothes – pants, shirt, and a tie. Women were rare, spotted only when visiting the library or business office.

Fr. Terry Brennan, SJ teaches a Spanish class at Marquette University High School.

All freshmen took the same curriculum. We attended daily Mass, seated in the same place. We also sat in the same spot in each class because our desks were assigned alphabetically in those identically arranged rooms.

My classmates were all Catholic, and almost all had attended Catholic grade schools. We shared our faith as members of Sodality groups and were required to do an annual retreat which, whether on campus or at a retreat house, generally consisted of the students listening to a number of talks given by a “Father” Jesuit and then spending the rest of the days in silence.

TThe only other Jesuit high school we knew of at first was Campion (See Page 19), and only then because we played them in varsity football. That football game and standardized “Province Exams” were the first indications I remember that there were other high schools where men walked around in black robes. In time we learned of the mission schools and Creighton Prep in Omaha.

A Creighton Prep student receives the Eucharist from Fr. William O’Leary, SJ, a mainstay at the school since 1964.

Looking back on that freshman year and subsequent years, my strongest memory is the constant presence of the Jesuits – Blackrobes were everywhere! Although we didn’t talk of Jesuit education and Ignatian spirituality, we had the sense that we were in a special place because of the presence of those “Fathers,” “Brothers,” and “Misters” in black robes, an atmosphere to help develop our talents and a moral compass.

I graduated from Marquette High in 1964 but returned 11 years later as a faculty member. Much had changed in the world of Wisconsin Province high schools. Campion had closed. One of the Indian mission schools, St. Francis on South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation, was now a charter/community school. The other, Holy Rosary, on the Pine Ridge Reservation (which had become the first coed Jesuit high school in the U.S. in 1963) was now called the Red Cloud Indian School.

Province high school faculties and student bodies were undergoing dynamic changes. At Marquette High there were now more lay teachers than Jesuits. Marquette’s student population was broadening from an almost all-European descendant composition to include students representing other nations of origin. Diversification was also occurring in terms of non-Catholic religious backgrounds.

A Red Cloud Indian School student receives instruction from Fr. Jim McDermott, SJ in 1999, when he was a Jesuit scholastic and English teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Fr. McDermott is now an associate editor at America magazine in New York City.

These trends have continued over the past 30 years to the point where it should certainly startle no one to hear there are now very few Jesuits on the staffs of our high schools; lay women and men are currently filling most administrative and faculty positions. This shift from a predominantly blackrobe staff to a more diverse robe of many colors is the most visible change in the province secondary school landscape from 1955 to 2005. The challenge, of course, has been and continues to be maintaining that sense of providing a special place for adolescents to mature.

Why is this challenge worthy of our devoted efforts? Perhaps Fr. Bill O’Leary, SJ, a long-time fixture and devoted educator at Creighton Prep, put it best when he said, “High school education is important because high school is the stage when youngsters are still impressionable. It is vitally important that we help them develop all their talents and help them catch fire for Jesus.”

Creighton Prep Students gather at the foot of a recently erected statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola. A strong foundation in Ignatian spirituality is essential to imbuing students with the five key qualities of a Jesuit high school education: open to growth; intellectually competent; religious; loving; and committed to doing justice.

Back in the day, as I like to say, the primarily all-Jesuit staff at Marquette High, imbued with a spirit of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, provided high school students with a sense that our God is a loving God who wants love in return. So, too, the collaborative lay-Jesuit high school staff today must also be formed by the Exercises in order to provide that same sense of a love relationship with our God.

Adolescents are filled with questions of self doubt about their lovability and capabilities: Am I tall enough, strong enough, or smart enough? Will I have the ability to compete? Will I pass the test or make the team or earn a spot in the spring play? Will I have the ability to get a good job? And, most seriously, the adolescent asks him or herself: Will I ever have someone truly love me? Am I able to love someone else?

How does a Jesuit high school help to express God’s love to adolescents amid all this self doubt? We do so first of all by simple presence – adults spending time with and enjoying adolescents goes a long way toward telling them that they are loved.

By letting them know some people truly care about them, we help them begin to grasp the concept of a loving God. Also, helping students learn where their talents lie and guiding them toward systematically developing those talents allows them to know that they are truly capable people. Helping adolescents feel capable and lovable has always been the main ministry of any Jesuit high school, and it remains so today.

A Creighton Prep student athlete listens to his coach. A healthy body and a healthy mind are important to a successful high school experience.

So what are the challenges we need to face to allow us to continue this powerful ministry? The main challenge is to continue developing strong leaders for the high schools and effective Jesuit-lay collaboration.

Fr. Pat Burns, SJ, a former provincial, articulates this challenge very clearly. “As Jesuits become ever more scarce, will there be lay (and Jesuit) leaders to maintain and improve the essential Ignatian and Catholic dimensions of Jesuit schools?” Because a number of lay persons now working in the schools have collaboratively worked with Jesuits for a number of years and have gradually experienced Ignatian spirituality, there is a strong lay leadership core. Our job as a province is to ensure that programs are in place to develop Jesuits and lay persons as leaders who are on fire with the power of the Spiritual Exercises and are willing to work in respectful collaboration with each other.

Another challenge is to continue to understand who the “new immigrants” are and to educate that population. Again, Fr. Pat Burns articulates this issue: “Our schools are trying but still are not currently educating our country’s ‘new immigrants’ and other minorities in the same proportion they did before so many mainstream Catholics were around who wanted their children to get a Jesuit education.”

Certainly, the new Cristo Rey model schools seek to educate the new immigrants. But what about Prep and Marquette High? Their challenge is to continue to educate “grad at grad” type leaders, short for graduates at graduation. This is Jesuit secondary education parlance for the goal of developing young men and women who, at graduation, are imbued with five key qualities: open to growth; intellectually competent; religious; loving; and committed to doing justice.

More and more such individuals will come from the groups of new immigrants while many will continue to come from families who were immigrants three and four generations ago.

The old fourth-floor chapel at Marquette High is filled to capacity for a student is filled to capacity for a student Mass in this circa 1956 photo. The school is served by a smaller chapel today, and large Masses are held in the auditorium.

In other words, this is not an “either-or” dilemma. It is a “both-and” challenge. It is not a choice of having Jesuit education available either at Prep or at a Cristo Rey school. It is a matter of the province's ensuring that Jesuit education will be available to mold ethical leaders for society and for the Church – leaders who are first generation immigrants and fifth generation ones.

The third main challenge facing our province high schools is to understand how to serve the Church as a Catholic institution, a growing challenge for our schools over the decades since Vatican II. One facet of the challenge involves how to deal with non-Catholic students. Another is dealing with families, students, and faculty who have quite different views of what it means to have a “Catholic identity.” These are my personal views, shaped as a student, teacher, principal, and most recently as coordinator of high school projects for the Wisconsin and Missouri provinces of the Society of Jesus. No doubt these views will continue to change and grow in the coming months as I adjust to my new position as president of the Nativity Jesuit Middle School in Milwaukee, which is dedicated to training Christian leaders in the Hispanic community.

Creighton Prep uses a large multi-purpose room (below) built in the early 1990s on the west side of the school for many of its larger gatherings and Masses.

One of my goals there will be continuing to lay the groundwork so that our graduates’ children will become second-generation, Jesuit-educated leaders. I want to see our students grow to thrive in schools like Marquette High for many years to come – generation upon generation of Catholic leaders living the “grad at grad” ideals.

Maybe even 50 years hence, one of them will write an article similar to this one as the centuries-old tradition of Jesuit secondary education continues to evolve and present new challenges.

Return to Spring/Summer 2005 issue

Previous Article: Wisconsin Province Universities: A tradition of excellence in Catholic higher education

Next Article: Middle school education: Meeting challenges where the need is greatest